In the 10 years since he won first prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, the Italian-born pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi has established a distinguished career as a soloist with major orchestras, as a recitalist, and as a teacher in the United States and internationally. Locally, he has been a guest artist and teacher at Pianofest in the Hamptons on several occasions.
On Saturday evening, he treated a capacity audience at the Southampton Cultural Center’s Levitas Center for the Arts to a concert that brilliantly showcased his extraordinary talent. The program featured music from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, and all three composers whose works were played, as it happens, had life spans that bridged two centuries.
The concert concluded the 2008-2009 season of “Rising Stars” piano recitals, but as Liliane Questel, the series director, correctly noted in her introductory remarks, the word “rising” no longer applies. Mr. Pompa-Baldi is a star—and he is shining brightly.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi opened his program with a very early work by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), a prodigy born in what is now Slovakia and taught by no less a maestro than Mozart himself.
The Sonata in C Major, Opus 2, Number 3 is lively and melodious. Mr. Pompa-Baldi performed its three movements with clarity and crisp articulation; giving the Allegro Spiritoso its desired energy and decisiveness, imbuing the Adagio with elegance; and giving the final Rondo dynamic rhythm and contrasting tone color.
Hearing the work played with such style makes one wish this composer’s work would appear more frequently on concert programs. Perhaps Mr. Pompa-Baldi can be persuaded to include Hummel in future recording projects.
The next work on the program, Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, moved the mood into more impressionistic, introspective spheres, and Mr. Pompa-Baldi moved seamlessly with the music’s intent. In the Prelude and Menuet, he evoked echoes of the earlier French harpsichordists whom the composer wanted to honor. Clair de lune, the third movement, was performed with Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s always-beautiful tone, and a wonderful simplicity and calm. Both lucid and luminous, it was—for this listener at least—the loveliest moment of the evening.
The suite’s final movement, Passepied, was quick-stepping and lively, but not jarring, thanks to Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s sensitive understanding and flawless technique. It was a pleasure to hear the suite in its entirety. Often Clair de lune is extracted, and sometimes abused as a sentimental showpiece. A “bravo” for this soloist’s artistry and good taste.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi is a slender man of calm but forceful temperament. He does not indulge in meaningless flamboyance of dress or gesture. For Saturday’s concert, he was clad in monkish black slacks and shirt with a stand-up collar (no tie, no tux). Yet his body language and expressive face point the listeners’ attention to whatever musical ideas he is emphasizing. Throughout his concert, he seemed to be holding a dialog with the music, as if he were time-traveling back to commune with the composer himself.
After the Debussy, another change of mood, from dreamy to dramatic, arrived with the Sonata Number 2, Opus 36, in B-flat minor, by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The composer and virtuoso pianist, who lived from 1873 to 1943, wrote this demanding and technically difficult work in 1913 and revised it in 1931. Mr. Pompa-Baldi chose to perform the later version. He was fully up to the challenge.
He created excitement with the rich, dramatic chords of the first movement, marked “Allegro agitato,” bringing out Rachmaninoff’s complex harmonies with flying fingers but no blurred notes. With the second movement, the fast tempos begin to melt into “Non-allegro-Lento,” with contrasting tone colors and dynamics that highlight the composer’s love for the sound of Russian bells.
Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s concentrated, intense performance held the audience in rapt attention. Not a sound—no cough, not the slightest sniffle—was to be heard in the hall as the soloist launched into the third movement—“L’istesso tempo-Allegro molto.” Passionate and—almost needless to say—difficult, this movement leads to a fiery, fast and furious finish. Mr. Pompa-Baldi not only sustained the excitement, but built it into a kind of controlled frenzy that brought the audience leaping to its feet barely a second after the last note was struck.
The artist acknowledged the storm of applause with a heart-melting smile, was recalled for several bows, and announced that he would oblige with an encore by Moritz Moszkowski. It was just the right dessert: light, sweet, and perfectly presented.
The Rising Stars Piano Recital Series will resume in October. Meanwhile, thanks are due to the sponsors of Mr. Pompa-Baldi’s concert—Ana Daniel, James B. Jeffrey, and Roger Samet—as well as Ms. Questel and the Southampton Cultural Center and Levitas Center for the Arts, for continuing to bring top quality music and talent to the community.
on May 26, 2009